Nightmare (1) - The Carousel of Lost Days
It had been a long time since I last dreamed of the past. It was the time when I lived as Ryu Harang, before reincarnating into this game world.
My short yet long life could be summed up as a carousel endlessly spinning in the same place.
Ryu Harang. Abandoned at an orphanage without ever knowing my parents' faces, I grew up learning the coldness of the world. Even as an orphan without parents, I had to attend school because Korea mandates education through middle school.
— That kid doesn't have a mom or dad.
— I heard they dumped him at the orphanage right after he was born. Let's not get close to him.
Children can be surprisingly perceptive, and their innocence sometimes proves crueler than malice wrapped in adult words. During parent observation classes, field trips, homework, or supply preparations, the gap between those with parents and me stood out starkly, so word of my being an orphan spread quickly.
I didn't feel wronged or sad. Losing something you'd never had in the first place only leaves behind a vague longing, never the sense that it was taken away.
— Harang, is something wrong? You look upset.
The director of the orphanage who took me in was kind and gentle, but even she couldn't shield me from every hardship the world had to offer.
“I'm fine. Nothing's wrong.”
I kept silent. Even at a young age, I understood there was no easy way to fix the situation surrounding me. Once I realized how crucial it was in Korea to have parents—bound as the country was by blood, regional, and school ties—I began saving money by working illegal part-time jobs.
Money. Money. Money. I believed that becoming rich would solve everything, clinging to that crude faith in the almighty power of gold. Looking back now, it was a narrow, extreme view born from a middle schooler's limited perspective.
So I worked odd jobs at construction sites and did whatever menial labor I could find, scraping together cash.
──Screeeech!! Thud! Crash!
The meeting with the girlfriend who would turn my entire life upside down began, unexpectedly, with a traffic accident.
They say fortune and misfortune are two sides of the same coin.
— Are you all right? Can you move?!
The one who hit me was a luxury sedan carrying the chairman of a chaebol group. Thanks to that accident, I ended up hospitalized in a VIP room.
— You call yourself a chauffeur and you hit a student? What are you going to do about this child's legs?! Take him to our hospital immediately!
While the man in the black suit was being scolded by the chairman, I received a four-week diagnosis and had casts put on my legs. The hospital and treatment fees were fully covered by the chairman's side, so I spent that month enjoying an unexpected freedom.
“…Hello. Did you hurt your leg?”
“Yeah. Looks like I'll be like this for a month.”
While wandering the hospital with my casts on, I fatefully encountered a girl with skin as white as snow. The moment I saw Yuho—with her pure white complexion and hair as dark and beautiful as ebony—I fell for her at first sight, as if she were a princess straight out of a fairy tale.
“You. What's your name?”
“…Ryu Harang.”
“Ah, so you're the student my dad's driver hit. You must be in the VIP room if you could come all the way here. *Cough*.”
She coughed frequently, fragile like a glass figurine. Her pale, bloodless skin had an oxygen saturation monitor and IV lines attached to her slender fingers and the back of her hand.
“…Since we met like this, want to play chess? It's boring being the only one in this ward.”
Despite her precarious appearance, Yuho smiled brightly. Through chess, she showed me the world again—the will to live, the girl who had never left the hospital since childhood due to heart disease.
“You're not going to tell me your name?”
“Depends? If you beat me at chess, I'll tell you. Games are more fun when there's a stake.”
“I don't know anything about chess. I didn't learn much because I don't have parents.”
“What does that have to do with anything? Chess is about predicting your opponent's moves and blocking them in advance. Background doesn't matter at all.”
The meeting of a boy and girl abandoned by the world first took place on a board of black and white. Sitting on An Yuho's pristine white bed, playing chess on that narrow hospital mattress, we became the first friends with whom I truly opened up.
“The knight doesn't move like that. It goes in a Y shape…. Ah, I'll just show you myself. Give me your hand.”
Since I knew nothing about chess, An Yuho took my hand with her small, pale fingers and taught me how to move the pieces.
“What? Your face is red. Don't tell me that's the first time you've held a girl's hand?”
“…Yeah. The other kids at school avoid me and think I'm weird.”
“That's strange. Harang, you're pretty good-looking, aren't you? I can't leave the hospital, so I've only seen men on YouTube, so I don't really know….”
*Cough, cough.*
An Yuho seemed to notice I was experiencing my first love, yet she never stopped teasing me even while coughing. Later I learned that she had liked me from the first moment she saw me and had deliberately held my hand to try flirting.
“Check. That's how you do it. Don't look at my face—look at the board. Focus, Ryu Harang.”
“Huh? Oh…. Got it. So if you can capture the opponent's king, you declare check.”
Contrary to her frail appearance, the An Yuho I met and came to know was a hopeful, mischievous girl.
“Hehe, I won again. Even if I give you the first move, it shouldn't be this easy.”
“Sorry. Should I study more?”
“No. It's fine. Instead…. Won't you tell me stories about the outside world?”
“Would that be enough?”
“Yeah. My heart's been weak since I was little, so I've never been to school. Even a short walk outside the hospital is exhausting.”
A rich rose scent. The girl who had lived in hospitals since childhood because of her weak heart approached me with an unforgettable fragrance and made this suggestion.
“It probably won't be a pleasant story.”
“It's okay. Life up close is tragedy, but from a distance it's comedy. Your life won't be only sadness either.”
That was how I became friends with An Yuho. Under the pretext of telling her about the outside world, I kept visiting the hospital even after being discharged.
“…So what's your name?”
“I told you I'd tell you if you win at chess. It's a name that sounds like a boy's, so it's a complex….”
For the record, An Yuho always gave me the first move, but it took a full year before I finally won. I strongly suspected she had let me win even then, but it was proof she had opened her heart to me.
===========================
Thus we spent all the seasons together—the turning of autumn leaves, falling white snow, and the sprouting of new buds.
“Harang, don't you read books?”
“You need money to buy them. Your father is helping me now, but I don't want to ask for more than I have to.”
The chairman, delighted that his precious daughter An Yuho had finally made a friend, even made a large donation to the orphanage. But I never asked him for money or openly told her what I wanted. Pretending to want nothing was the habit I'd developed because adults felt more at ease that way.
“Then I'll lend them to you!”
“……Huh?”
Yet An Yuho treated me warmly, as if my past or family circumstances didn't matter, and offered various kinds of help.
“It's a book called Demian. After you read it, just tell me your impressions. I won't spoil anything!”
Yes. The first book she lent me was Demian, the same name as the hero. A novel about a boy's journey to find his true self, following Sinclair and Demian—that was what she liked.
“You finished it?”
“In the end, aren't Demian and Sinclair the same person? That's how I read it.”
“Maybe. There's that line: ‘The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. That God's name is Abraxas.’”
“So the self grows, breaks out of the world it was trapped in, and emerges.”
“But wouldn't it be more fun if they were actually different people? Similar yet different—like twins or figures from parallel worlds!”
Clearly, the reason we started playing the game I Want to Be a Hero Like You! was because the protagonist shared a name with the novel. Together we read Moby-Dick, And Then There Were None, At the Mountains of Madness, and shared our thoughts.
“So that's how you see it, Harang. This is the first time I've ever shared impressions with someone like this.”
“…You're really smart. There are still so many words I don't know. Chekhov's Gun, Deus Ex Machina…. Will I ever be able to think like you someday?”
“Who knows? Maybe just by exchanging thoughts like this, we're already becoming more like each other. That's what life is, after all.”
The girl who had never stepped outside the hospital and the boy abandoned by the world had thus connected their worlds.
“…Harang, you don't have a girlfriend, right?”
An Yuho said this while placing her hand over mine, her head bowed low as if embarrassed by her blushing cheeks.
“What do you mean by that….”
“We even kissed. Why haven't you confessed? I thought I gave you plenty of signals. Lately I've only been lending you romance novels….”
“Ah.”
“You should at least understand metaphors by now.”
Then and now, I was hopelessly dense. I made An Yuho confess her feelings herself because I hadn't noticed her affection.
===========================
Years passed after An Yuho and I became a couple in middle school. Her illness, which the doctors said she probably wouldn't survive past twenty, seemed to have miraculously improved. Until I took the college entrance exam, we maintained our unchanging routine. The only difference was that we were now truly lovers, sharing skinship without hesitation and discussing our thoughts while playing I Want to Be a Hero Like You! together.
“…You're really sure your body's okay? I haven't seen you as often lately.”
“You need to study for the exam too. You said you'd get into university and take care of me, remember? I'm just trying not to get in your way.”
I should have noticed the lie then, but the fool I was ruined our ending in the worst possible way.
“What if—just hypothetically—what if, Yuho.”
Stop. Please don't say those words. I reached out and tried to shout at my past self reenacting the trauma right before my eyes, but I couldn't reach him.
“Yeah, go ahead.”
“Once my exam is over…. We could go somewhere like Jeju Island, or if that's too much, how about just going to a small concert by the lake nearby?”
“……”
An Yuho's expression stiffened for a moment before relaxing. There was an emotion I hadn't seen before but could now recognize.
“That sounds nice, doesn't it? You said your body has been much better lately. The doctor even said you could make it past twenty now, right?”
It was a lie. Those were only words passed through Yuho's mouth—I had never once heard directly from her attending physician that her condition had improved. Blinded by premature hope, I failed to see the shadow hidden behind it.
Yuho had only told a white lie so as not to worry me days before the exam. I was too stupid to realize it.
“Yeah. Let's do that. Once your exam is over, Harang…. Let's go on a trip to Jeju Island, see lots of pretty things, take tons of pictures, and make lots of memories.”
In the end, I couldn't be there for Yuho's final moments and had no choice but to let her go in vain.
“…I did it! I made it! The exam's over now—I can go to Jeju Island with Yuho!”
What kind of nightmare was this? Watching my past self dash straight to the hospital after the exam, I nearly cursed out loud. That idiot's head must have been filled with nothing but those thoughts as he finished booking plane tickets and lodging.
Yuho would be happy too. I almost got a perfect score. It was all thanks to her teaching me. I should thank her…. Such happy thoughts probably never stopped, even while crossing the crosswalk.
But by then, Yuho was already dead, lying in the morgue.
That was how I parted with my girlfriend in the worst possible way and ended up entering the game world we used to play together.
===========================
With that, all remnants of the past vanished, and the scenery around me transformed into a giant chessboard. Sitting across from me was a figure whose head was made of black rose flowers, while the opponent on the other side was obscured, as if covered by static.
“So what is it you want to tell me? There must be a reason you appeared in this nightmare. Yuho.”
Looking at that grotesque figure, I was certain it was An Yuho and asked what she wanted from wherever she was in this world.